Featured image, by Ayana Friedman, is reproduced from The Fertile Crescent.

PRAISE AND REVIEWS

Choice

E. K. Mix

This catalogue for an exhibition held at multiple venues at Rutgers and Princeton Universities makes a substantial contribution to an understudied topic bridging the disciplines of art, art history, and gender studies: the transnational discourse of women artists of the Middle East. Four short but well- illustrated essays provide important context for the work. Brodsky and Olin, exhibition curators and cofounders of the Rutgers University Institute of Women and Art, explain the irony of the title in their essay " The Fertile Crescent: Gender, Art and Society: Unavailable Intersections." Badram contributes " The Art of Revolution in Egypt: Brushes with Women", which contains lucid interpretations of works by Huda Lutfi, Nadine Hammam, and Souad Abdel Rasoul. "Art, Precarity, Biopolitics" is penned by Baum, and Tawadros offers " Slipping away (or Uncompliant Cartographies)." The catalogue portion includes statements and biographical essays for the artists; among the many included are Shiva Ahmadi, Ghada Amer, Zeina Barakeh, Parastou Forouhar, Mona Hatoum, Ariane Littman, Shirin Neshat, Laila Shawa, Shahzia Sikander, and Nil Yalter. The excellent color illustrations, including many video stills, serve as an important additional scholarly resource.

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/27/2012

Last week, The New York Times published its annual Books for Art Lovers Holiday Gift Guide, recommending a surprising star from our list: THE FERTILE CRESCENT: GENDER, ART, AND SOCIETY, an investigation of "art being made by women all across the Middle East." Karen Rosenberg recommends the book "for any curator interested in recent art from the region ó or, for that matter, anyone curious to know how artists are responding to the instability of the past couple of years." She continues, "The artist profiles, which make up the bulk of the book, cover a lot of ground; they include some museum and art market stars like Ghada Amer, Mona Hatoum and Shirin Neshat, but also many younger women with less exposure in the United States. Those to watch include the performance artist Fatima Al Qadiri, who directed transvestites in a video series about Kuwaiti housewives; Hayv Kahraman, who paints mysterious beauty rituals in a style derived from Persian miniatures; and Parastou Forouhar, whose photograph of a womanís hand emerging from a patterned veil graces the bookís cover. Featured image, a staged shot for the performance "Red Freedom" (2008), is by Ayana Friedman. continue to blog